Jayne Castle: After Glow

It was easy to see what had happened. No doubt belatedly aware that he was in serious trouble from the overdose, Maltby had evidently tried to get to his feet, perhaps to call for help. He would have been dazed and unsteady and had probably flailed wildly about, grabbing at the nearest objects in a vain attempt to steady himself. He had knocked the lamp and blotter askew in the process.

She leaned down to open the top desk drawer. What could it hurt to just glance inside to see if Maltby had left any clue to what it was he had wanted to tell her?

She paused in the act of reaching for the drawer knob when she noticed the little sheet of paper lying on the worn carpet. It was just the right size to have been torn off the small notepad that sat next to the phone.

Curious, she crouched down and angled herself under the desk to pick up the paper. When she turned it over she saw that someone had started to scrawl a couple of words in a very shaky hand.

Amber Hil

A knock sounded loudly on the front door of the apartment, shattering the unnatural stillness of the death room. Startled, she started to straighten. Her head collided smartly with the underside of the desk.

"Damn." She scrambled out from under the desk and dropped the paper into her purse.

There was a second knock. A shiver went through her. Whoever was out there in the hall managed to make a simple rap on the door sound like a summons to doom.

She hesitated, uncertain whether or not to respond. She still didn't hear any sirens, which ruled out the possibility that Maltby's visitor was a medic or a cop. Given the character of the neighborhood, that left a lot of unpleasant possibilities.

She pondered the wisdom of simply ignoring the knock. Then she recalled that the door was unlocked.

Whoever was out there in the hall might decide to try his luck with the knob at any moment.

It would probably be a really good idea to go into the front room and lock the door.

She hurried out of the study, went down the short hall, and traversed the dingy sitting room on tiptoe. There was a peephole in the heavily reinforced door. Trying not to give away her presence, she put her eye to the little circle of glass. At the same time she reached out to throw the bolt.

She stopped when she saw the man standing in the shadowy hall. A day's growth of dark beard, scarred boots, rugged khaki pants and shirt, and a battered leather jacket added up to one conclusion. This was the kind of guy who looked like he'd make an interesting date if you were in a mood to take a walk on the wild side, but you would definitely not want to run into him in a dark alley on a moonless night.

His eyes were a disturbing combination of gold and green. He had the hard, implacable features of a man who was accustomed to being in command.

The face of his watch was a circle of amber. She knew this because she knew the man.

There was nothing special about the amber watch, of course. Almost everyone wore amber in one form or another. Two hundred years ago the colonists from Earth had quickly learned that here on Harmony the unique gemstone had a very special property: Amber made it possible for humans to focus their latent psychic energy, paranormal powers that the environment of the new world had somehow released.

Given the fact that, by the second generation, all of the colonists' offspring exhibited some degree of psi talent and could control it with the use of amber, the stuff had quickly become the energy source of choice. Even little children could resonate with amber with sufficient skill to operate a door key or switch on the rez-screen to watch cartoons.

Lydia knew only too well that Emmett London was not into amber accessories because they were fashionable. He was a very powerful dissonance-energy para-resonator—a ghost-hunter. He had the psychic talent and the training required to neutralize the dangerous, flaring balls of chaotic dissonance energy, the so-called ghosts , that drifted at random through the endless underground corridors of the alien ruins.

Ghost-hunters were a necessary part of any excavation team. They were, in essence, professional bodyguards who were hired from their Guilds to protect archaeologists, researchers, and others who explored and excavated the ancient catacombs beneath the Dead City.

Until she had met Emmett last month, she had held an extremely low opinion of hunters in general. She considered most dissonance-energy para-rezes to be little better than high-end mobsters. There was a hunters' Guild in every major city on Harmony and as far as she was concerned they were merely legalized criminal organizations run by ruthless bosses.

Emmett was the mysterious ex-boss of the Resonance City Guild. Shortly after his arrival here in Cadence last month, rumors had begun to circulate in the tabloids to the effect that he was the handpicked successor of the current boss of the Cadence City Guild, Mercer Wyatt.

Emmett denied any interest in assuming the leadership of the local Guild, but Lydia was not so sure he could avoid the job—not if Wyatt put pressure on him. There were a lot of old sayings about the hunters and the Guilds, one of which was, once a Guild man, always a Guild man . Granted, the conventional wisdom over-looked the fact that there were some female hunters but that was beside the point.

In the past few weeks she had tried very hard not to think about the fact that she was sleeping with the man Mercer Wyatt had chosen to take over as the boss of the Cadence Guild.

She yanked open the door and threw herself into Emmett's arms.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you," she said into his shirt. "How did you find me?"

"I called your office. Melanie told me you were here." He put an arm around her shoulders and glanced back to check the grimy hallway. Satisfied, he moved both of them into the apartment and closed the door. "What the hell are you doing in this part of town?"

"Maltby, the man who lives here, said he wanted to see me. When I arrived I found him lying on the floor of his study." She took a deep breath. "He's sort of dead."

Emmett looked pained. "Not another one."

She frowned. "This isn't like the last time. It looks like Maltby took an overdose of Chartreuse. I called for an ambulance." She sighed. "Not that it will do any good."

"Where is he?"

The stoic resignation in his voice annoyed her. "You don't have to act as if I make a habit of finding dead bodies." She waved a hand toward the study. "He's in the room down that hall."

Emmett walked to the doorway of the study. She trailed after him, clutching her purse.

"This is not good," Emmett said.

"Yes, well, it's a lot worse for Maltby."

"That's not what I meant. Some complications have come up. The last thing we need right now is a dead body."

He disappeared into the study.

Alarmed, she hurried to the doorway. Emmett was standing over Maltby's remains, surveying the small space with a considering expression.

"What complications?" she asked. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see you, but what are you doing here? When did you get home from the camping trip with Zane and his buddies?"

It was not at all surprising that Emmett looked a little rough around the edges today, she thought. Her young neighbor, Zane Hoyt, and his pals were all budding dissonance-energy para-resonators from a part of town where good male role models were decidedly scarce. The boys in the neighborhood were growing up fast with more psi power than any of them knew how to handle. It was a recipe for disaster. They desperately needed guidance and a firm hand.

The Guild-sponsored Hunter-Scout troops were a useful community resource for boys in Cadence but there had been none in the section of the city where Lydia and Zane lived. Emmett had taken care of the problem a couple of weeks ago when he had quietly prodded the Guild into establishing a troop in the neighborhood. He had even gone so far as to take an active interest in the newly formed group.